Belt buckles with a fastening fitting for mounting fixed to the vehicle are used to latch a belt tongue of a seat belt system that secures the passenger in a vehicle. To prevent the belt buckles, in particular on the rear seats, from interfering when not in use, they must be designed movably. In the event that a passenger sits on the belt buckle, the belt buckles can then move out of the way or retract.
In addition, it is important to design the belt buckle connection to the vehicle to be movable, because in the case of folding seats the belt buckles must be moved from the rest position or the use position into another position in which the belt buckles do not interfere with the movement of the rear seat or the rear seat back and/or cannot be damaged by the latter.
For example, a belt buckle is known from EP 0 854 070 B1 that can be moved in various directions, e.g. in the longitudinal direction of the belt buckle, rotatable around an axis crosswise to the vehicle's longitudinal direction and rotatable around an axis parallel to the vehicle's longitudinal direction. A resetting means designed as a spring is provided so that the belt buckle is moved back to a rest position after the deflection. To limit the resetting movement into the rest position a stopper is provided at the fastening fitting at which the retainer of the belt buckle is stopped in the rest position.
However, the disadvantage of this solution is that the resetting movement is braked relatively hard by the stopper when it comes to rest. In addition, the rest position itself can only be changed at great expense in that the stopper at the retainer is aligned differently, which necessitates a change to the punching tool.
The task of the invention is to create a belt buckle in which the above-mentioned disadvantages are avoided.